Beirut (agencies)
The Lebanese authorities warned yesterday that the cracked northern part of the grain silos in the Beirut port is in danger of collapsing, nearly two weeks following the fire broke out, at a time when Lebanon celebrates next week the second anniversary of the horrific explosion. The Minister of Environment in the caretaker government, Nasser Yassin, told the prime minister-designate, that “monitoring and sensors in the silos detected changes in the bending speed from 2 mm per day to 2.5 mm per hour for the northern group of silos, which is in danger of falling.”
The warning comes two weeks following a fire broke out in the northern part of Al-Ahrat, which, according to authorities and experts, resulted from the fermentation of grain stocks with high temperatures and humidity, and the attempt to put out the fires by spraying water in the previous days increased the grain’s moisture.
The fire reminded the Lebanese of scenes from the August 4, 2020, explosion, which killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,500 others, and caused widespread destruction to the port and a number of neighborhoods in the capital.
